Dr Shane Bergin

speaker

581 appearances 6 recordings 2 series first heard May 2026 last heard 10 Sep

Dr Shane Bergin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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Today with David McCullagh · Forgotten Irish Heros of science · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

And sometimes it's important to recognise the rarity of the other types of scientists as well.

Nobody's trying to rewrite history or try to over-emphasise any group, but it is important to look at, in particular, women scientists in Irish history and recognise the work that they did at a time when they couldn't access universities, they couldn't join learned societies, but yet still their curiosity, for the few that were able to do it, pushed through.

Yeah, and on that woke mind virus stuff, I talk about this with students all the time.

Diversity in science is an epistemic strength.

The number of people that come from different backgrounds that come to science bring all of their life experience with them.

And so they bring the topics that they want to research.

It's not a coincidence that for a long, long time, women's health care was massively under-researched.

Because most of the people doing the research were men.

All right.

So let us begin this journey then, please, with Kathleen Lonsdale.

I have to begin here because she's a native of my hometown, Newbridge in County Kildare.

Kathleen Lonsdale was born in 1903 and she was born in the building that subsequently became my secondary school.

And you would think that her name would be everywhere.

I never heard of her until I'd gone to college and studied chemistry.

But Kathleen Lonsdale did amazing work.

She was interested in tiny, tiny molecules, not something you could just lash under an ordinary microscope and have a look at it.

Instead, she was using the then new technology of X-rays to understand tiny, tiny materials.

And she was interested in one in particular, one called benzene, right?

So benzene is made up of carbon and carbon is an amazing element because it has the capacity to join onto other carbons.

So you're able to do this kind of Lego brick approach with carbon and that allows you to make complex things, including life.

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